The present invention relates to a character video signal generation system and, more particularly, to a character video signal generation system which produces character patterns suitable for facsimile communication or the like as bit-by-bit video signals.
In a facsimile communication system for example, the transmitter or addresser's name, telephone number and other information for station identification which are absent on original documents must be reproduced at the receiver or addressee's station in addition to patterns on the original documents. This is to facilitate filing and management of recording sheets at the addressee's station.
Conventionally, a facsimile communication system has employed an additional information transmitting device located at the addresser's station and an additional information receiving device at the addressee's station, each being separate from the transceiver. With these additional devices, the addresser transmits additional information in code while the addressee transforms the code into data which can be recorded on a paper sheet.
This not only renders the facsimile system intricate but creates a drawback in that, due to the transmission of coded data, an error in transmission prevents the transmitted data from being reproduced accurately at the addressee's station.
A character video signal generation system has been proposed which includes a line counter for indicating a line position in the vertical scan direction, a column counter for indicating a column position in the horizontal scan direction, a character counter for indicating the horizontal scan direction on a one character basis and a character generator adapted to generate one character of a picture element pattern. The character generator generates a picture element pattern indicative of a given character in response to the count of the character counter. This picture element pattern is subjected to line-scan decomposition according to the counts of the line and column counters and thereby transformed into bit-by-bit video signals.
This permits information absent on original documents to be exchanged through existing facsimile devices and, therefore, makes the system construction simple. Since information is transmitted as decomposed picture elements, the redundancy is such that the addressee can obtain accurate information despite any slight error in the transmission. The system is thus quite convenient in reproducing such identification data at the addressee's station for facsimile communication.
Such advantages are further enhanced with the construction of the present invention.